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Topic: PC help req'd - Explorer Search function not working...

... or, more precisely, not working when I attach an external hard-drive - it works fine when I try searching my laptop drive's contents. But when I hook up an external drive that's full of just music files the search function never finds anything. I've Googled it but not found anything useful/conclusive. Any ideas?

Re: PC help req'd - Explorer Search function not working...

I've opened Windows Explorer - double clicked the external, attached, E drive - typed 'xxx' into the search field in the top right hand corner and it finds nothing, despite the fact I know there are umpteen 'xxx' files on there.

Re: PC help req'd - Explorer Search function not working...

Dermo wrote:

Smashy have you allowed your HD to crank up as such? There's a lag while it sits in idle on some.

Not a bad shout mate - leaving it hooked up for ages seems to have worked for one of the drives (strangely the one with the most data), but not the other two. Who knows eh? Obviously I should've bought a Mac...

Re: PC help req'd - Explorer Search function not working...

There's a few things that could be possibly going on here. The drive could be dead - which leaves you in a little bit of a different predicament.

Disconnect all external drives and go through these steps and report back.

That said, try this:1. Go to the Control Panel (or right click on the 'Computer' icon if you have it on your desktop and select Properties) and select Device Manager. Under Disk Drives, is the device showing? Is should say something like WDC WD10 JPVT-00MS8T0 USB Device. The USB bit is the part you're looking for.

2. I know it may sound dumb, but have you tried another USB cable to connect it with?

3. Go to Control Panel again. Click on Administrative Tools. Click on Computer Management. Under Storage in the left-hand column, make sure it is expanded and you should see 'Disk Management' as a sub-menu. Click on Disk Management. Do you see your external drive listed? Is the name of the drive listed? If so, does it show as healthy? If you don't see it listed, do you see the device name listed below in the rectangular areas but nothing else?

4. If you have another laptop or desktop kicking about try connecting it to them and see what happens. If you have a desktop kicking about, try mounting the drive internally (assuming you can do so if this isn't a sealed enclosure) to and see if the PC recognizes it.

5. If you know anyone who has a Linux box running, ask them to see if it recognizes it or download Ubuntu and run it off the CD image instead of installing it. See if Ubuntu (a version of Linux) recognizes it.

5. If none of that works, then I'm going to send you down the recovery software path because you're pretty much fucked. If you're lucky, it's just the file allocation table (FAT) header that's fucked and you should be able to recover everything. If you're really unfortunate, you've got dead sectors. If you're really fucked and nearly weeping at this point, you've got a hardware malfunction and the only sensible way to recover it is through a recovery service that will cost you at least 500 quid or more. a) Grab a copy of Hiren's Boot CD.b) Run the diagnostics on your drive there if it will let you.c) Grab a copy of Ontrack EasyRecovery 10 Professional. They have a trial here: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.ca/file- … e/windows/ If that doesn't work, PM me.d) Run EasyRecovery Pro. Go on holiday for 2 weeks.e) Come back from holiday, see if EasyRecovery was able to do anything for you and recover everything you can and back up, back up, back up.

Re: PC help req'd - Explorer Search function not working...

Chaps - the drive in question has 1TB of music on it which I have nowhere else to store, even temporarily, whilst I reformat the entire drive. Given that ALL the data on it is intact and sound (in the other sense of that word) I'm happy to forego the search functionality on the drive if reformatting is the ONLY solution.

If it sheds any further light on it for anyone techy-minded then the same drive is the only one of my three externals that refuses to disconnect from Windows when you click the 'remove hardware' icon in the system tray - has done for as long as I can remember - the other drives I've got are fine - the search functionality works on them AND they disconnect from windows first time before I unplug them.